“Went into a coma and woke up two weeks later and my leg was gone,” Brown explains.

What followed was depression.

“I didn’t cope—that was the problem. Dealing with the physical loss of a leg is remarkably easier than dealing with the mental loss of a leg,” he explains. “The first day you get out of bed and you forget you lost your leg and take that step—that’s a bad day.”

Brown adds: “When … these passions in your life that you have are gone, full-blown depression sets in.”

Then he stumbled upon CrossFit.

“One day and I fell in love,” Brown says. “It hit all the buttons that I needed to get my life back.”

His wife, Tracy, says CrossFit helped her husband do much more than regain his competitiveness.

“I do think it has helped him love himself more as a person,” she says, “and who he is as a person.”